Auto Spark Plugs

Auto Maintenance, Repair, or Service could all be referring to a need to change your vehicle’s spark plugs. Spark plugs on a car, SUV, or Minivan could have a maintenance scheduled replacement of up to 105,000 miles. However, using low quality gas, internal engine coolant or oil leaks, or overheating of an engine can cause premature failure of a spark plug. This failure will cause a misfire and should turn on your check engine light. If this happens, you need to have your spark plugs replaced immediately. Most newer vehicle’s computers will turn of the fuel injector to the corresponding cylinder with the misfire in order to not spray gasoline into the catalytic converter. But sometimes this is not immediate and can result into substantial damage to your very expensive catalytic converter.

In the Cary Apex NC area, you can contact Peak Auto for maintenance, service, or diagnosis of you vehicle. Spark plugs are included in every gasoline burning vehicle maintenance service schedule. In the olden days (before 2000) engines required “tune-up” every 15,000 miles. At this time the spark plugs, spark plug wires, distributor car and distributor rotor were either inspected or replaced. In today’s modern vehicle, the engine is run by a computer. The computer is able to adjust the timing of the engine by use of an algorithm or mathematical formula. The engine computer gets a lot of different information form sensors on your vehicle.

Knowing the rotation of the engine is a critical part of the timing of adding fuel and adding spark. On every car, SUV, and minivan engine there is a crankshaft position sensor and a camshaft position sensor. The engine computer expects these two sensors to be in sink and will use this information to decide when to ad fuel and when to add spark. This process is happening for each engine cylinder anywhere from 800 to 6,000 times every minute. When the engine computer decides to send a spark to each cylinder, it uses a low level electrical pulse that is then transformed into a very high voltage by the ignition coil on each cylinder. This high voltage is converted into an electrical spark by your engines spark plugs. This spark ignited the fuel and in combination with the pistons and valves creates internal combustion. The combustion is what gives us power, and is why the engine is called an internal combustion engine.